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@judell

I have sometimes wondered what came of your old passion project. I'm glad you are still persisting.

Anecdotally I see less online event promotion in these parts and more of a return to word or mouth or paper posters. At the same time Calendar sharing seems all but forgotten. (Facebook Events may be slightly more common tho).

The world does not move in ways I once expected. I do less prediction than I used to do!

@judell

I think it is funny that Facebook is arguably the world leader in RSS calendar and use of standard calendar events.

@judell

Sometimes I wonder how much people really want to interact with calendars in any form (digital or paper). I suspect not as much as you and I.

It's a bit like photos. I assumed many people liked looking at old photos. I don't think that's true. I think in reality old photos upset most people.

@jgordon Let's see how https://www.getgather.com/ fares.

It makes brilliant use of calendars as a way to organize personal events on a timeline, in a way I think will appeal to the "busy mom" who is their key persona.

@jgordon It's possible that when it is up to people to initiate calendar entries, inertia prevails, but intelligent assistants poking events onto your calendar on your behalf might bring that timeline to life.

@judell I think it would have to be something like that .. perhaps the person never looks at the calendar but the assistant suggests things …

@jgordon Think of a calendar as just a way of organizing data on a timeline. Infrequently you post directly to it. More often automation (AI or conventional) does. It's too much to look at unfiltered, and hard to filter conventionally. But your personal AI augments your ability not only to filter, but also to control what gets put onto the timeline.

Who knows, right? But it sounds like it might be useful.

@judell @jgordon 24 years ago I started a company to build a smart calendar (first we had to build a calendar, then we had to build what would now be classified as AI to take semi structured data and make it structured. We did both but it was eh 20+ years early.

That said I think a LOT of people don’t use calendars or don’t use them as active tools. A few people (with typically human assistants) have lives dictated by their calendars. But most people use them sparsely & only w/spouses or work

@judell @jgordon what I wanted to build was calendars that updated themselves to show you possibilities (and were intelligent about grouping things like when tickets for an event went on sale so if you wanted to attend you could - and then show you the details of the event schedule if you were, in fact, attending it.

that’s a huge shift in how people interact with calendars - rarely do people use them to show possibilities

And scheduling (ie setting up meetings) is different but conflated

@Rycaut @jgordon This is what Gather is up to, I'm super-curious to see how it goes.

@judell @jgordon I’ll definitely take a look. I eh have thought about the space a lot.

Another thing I have long thought could be built (but is also hard to get right) is a social network around shared perspectives on time.

Ie if when you hear 2028 you think “Summer olympics in LA” vs if you think “US presidential election year” you likely share something with both others who do the same (or perhaps those who follow the Winter Olympics more avidly.

@Rycaut @jgordon Do you remember TimeDance?

https://www.infoworld.com/article/2670157/what-timedance-got-right.html

@judell @jgordon I don't - but then I was more focused on calendaring than scheduling (or setting stuff like shifts or appointments or similar)

Calendly comes to mind as perhaps a modern take on some aspects of this (though I think the calendly interface is still confusing to many)

http://doodle.com may be even closer as a modern take on getting a group to coordinate for some meetings (I've mostly used it for friends/ttrpgs but it is useful)

@Rycaut @jgordon What they both miss is the context around the negotiations, happening in the same shared space as the dates/times.

@judell @jgordon they both somewhat assume unequal power dynamics vs a more equal case where negotiation/discussion is part of the process. But Calendly and Doodle are often driven by one party making it possible for other's to schedule time with them via constraints that party sets (i.e. they have the power so set how long they will meet and what times they are available and I think even charge for it with some of those apps)

@jgordon @judell @Rycaut for social calendars there was when.com, bought by Netscape.
http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/WhenCom

@billseitz @jgordon @Rycaut Hard to figure what that thing is now!

"Part of the AOL Search Network"

@judell @jgordon @Rycaut a sad domain-hoarding

@TimHare See @simon's demo! I cherrypicked the image example but he also shows datasette-extract pulling structure out of HTML copied from an event page.

@judell @simon I figured that something like _that_ existed, what I'm really thinking about is event publishing software that not only creates an agenda- or calendar-like web page but also creates a link to an .ics file for each event, plus maybe a subscribable .ics file for all the events - for example a band's tour or a bar's list of upcoming performers. People publishing events just don't seem to care about making it possible for others' computers to read them!

@TimHare @judell I have a Datasette plugin that can help there - once the data is in a SQLite table it makes it easy to output that as a .ics feed https://datasette.io/plugins/datasette-ics

@udittmer Yeah I should do a writeup now that the lessons are finally coming into focus. Meanwhile, maybe just this: don't obsess about calendars, use datasette-extract to take whatever people can give you, in whatever format, publish in various human- and machine-readable formats, encourage but do not expect or require calendars and syndication.